Father Goose. Ralph Nelson. 1964. ⚁

What… what on Earth is this? I don’t quite know how I came to buy this DVD, but I was shopping for screwball comedies a while back, and perhaps this was part of that?

But it’s… it’s a comedy WWII movie? From 1964? In colour, and with a somewhat out-of-shape Cary Grant? And all the other actors are speaking English instead of American?

Oh, it’s from Republic Pictures? They went bankrupt, right? So this is probably from one of those public domain box sets I bought several years ago…

And that’s a pretty weird wipe for a mid-60s movie. Did the people who made this DVD get creative?

It’s also completely non-restored, so everything looks… pretty bad.

Oh, well. How bad can it be? I mean, it’s Cary Grant?

[an hour passes]

It’s pretty bad, and I’m not quite sure why. There’s some repartee in here that’s really witty, but somehow it doesn’t really… connect? Grant is playing a type of character unusual for him — a grizzled discontented alcoholic seaboat captain. He seems more like… he’s annoyed at having to do the movie?

I like all the actors, really — the stiff-upper-lip British military, the French teacher (and love interest), the kids… and yet I find it really, really hard to pay attention to the film at all. I wonder what the critics thought about it…

Wow.

Oh, was this a big deal? I’ve never heard of it before…

Hm…

What?! One of the better Cary Grant films!?

OK, the entire world is on acid, and not the good kind.

I think this could have been a fun thing to watch if it had been half an hour shorter. Instead it’s just kind of annoying.

But I may be wrong! Perhaps it would have been fascinating if the DVD transfer hadn’t been so crappy.

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Justin Lin. 2006. ⚁

This movie starts off as a sci-fi thing: A grown man steps through freestanding security gates to get into… something…

… and there’s like other guys in funny costumes there too? His clothes seem to point to him being in his 40s, although he looks otherwise like he’s in his 30s. There are some strange towers in the background… are we in the year 2525? Are they going to the moon?

What kind of sci-fi is this!!?

No, he’s just a high school student, and the year is 2006. That’s him being in high school; in car shop.

*sigh*

Casting, dude.

High school student. 17.

Him being left back five or six times makes the whole thing make a lot more sense.

[ten minutes pass]

Well, actually more minutes passed, because I took a break to tidy up the kitchen, but now I’m back.

So there’s no characters from the first two movies in here?

It’s just about geriatric-looking teenager? In Tokyo?

I now looked up his age, and he’s just 24 here, which makes me ashamed of calling him geriatric, but it’s too much work editing out that shit. SORRY!!!

OH MY GOD HE”S IN JAPAN AND THEY EAT WEIRD STUFF OH MY etc.

[more time passes]

It’s kinda disturbing how the movie shifts from vibrant colours in some scenes to tightly colour-graded stuff (like in the car park) where everything is grey/teal.

It’s a better movie than the second one, but it’s a really really bad movie.

[the end]

This is a really bad movie, but it’s not quite as bad as the second one, I think? They are both really tedious, so perhaps it’s a mistake to rank this over that one…

The tomatoes agree that it’s marginally better. Which makes me suspicious, but anyway.

I wanted to watch something easy and stupid, but now I’m starting to regret watching Fast & Furious.

2 Fast 2 Furious. John Singleton. 2003. ⚀

I couldn’t get the 4K version of this to rip, so I’m watching it in (*gasp*) 2K.

Oh noes.

[two minutes pass]

This was made by John Singleton? The Boyz n the Hood guy? Hm.

Well, OK, the colours really pop. Not everything colour-graded to teal, but instead a riot of colours, and I really like that.

[fifteen minutes pass]

So the bleached blond(e) guy is here, but otherwise there’s no connection to the first movie? I mean… there’s cars and stuff. I guess that’s a connection.

I did like that street race, but it was, like… much more of a fantasy than in the first movie. The cars rear-ending each other and stuff? Nah. What I liked about the first movie was that it was pretty nerdy. This is more like er what’s the word oh yeah stupid.

[ten minutes pass]

I was so surprised by the first movie: It had a complex plot (sort of) and a bunch of interesting characters, and this… they took the blond(e) guy from the first movie and then… nothing else? It seemed like they were doing a whole little micro universe in that movie that could have been expanded, but instead this is just a lame … sting thing?

OK, I’m disappointed, but now I’m resetting: This isn’t The Fast and the Furious, but perhaps it can be stupid fun anyway?

[more minutes pass]

I can’t get over how boring this movie manages to make street car racing seem. And the rest… it’s beyond tedium: It’s all the worst of the worst “man talk”. You couldn’t parody this because it’s just all there already.

This is just a horrible, horrible movie. I’m so disappointed. I wanted a fun, easy-to-watch movie, and instead it’s just sheer torture.

Did Singleton even watch the first movie before making this one? It’s like somebody told him “It’s a about street racing… and there’s a cop…” and the took it from there, just imagining how bad that has to be from that recap.

How did the franchise bounce back from this?

I assumed that this was a lower-budget sequel to cash in, but the budget was almost twice as big. It’s… OK, I guess the sheer number of cars was expensive, so they put the budget on the screen, but they didn’t use any money on, like… anything else?

I do like the colours. The colours pop. Other than that, there’s nothing here.